


these words just come out

by gearsystem



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: First Kiss, First Relationship, Homophobic Language, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, this is about eddie and richie having their first kiss as kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-25 18:42:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20728949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gearsystem/pseuds/gearsystem
Summary: Eddie Kaspbrak deals with thinking he might want to kiss his best friend.





	these words just come out

**Author's Note:**

> Title creds go to The Promise by When In Rome
> 
> TW: homophobic slurs (f slur specifically)
> 
> I hope you enjoy! I just needed to write about my boys.
> 
> Un-beta'd.

Eddie Kaspbrak had never been kissed. This was for an obvious reason, as far as he was concerned. Kissing meant exchanging saliva. The idea alone made at least 20 different ailments race through his head. His mother had told him more than enough times that kissing anyone would, without doubt, give Eddie AIDS.

As he got older, Eddie started seeing people kiss more and more. Movies, school hallways, even walking down the street, he would see people—no, boys and girls, men and women—kissing. It was something even 13 year-olds did, of which he had been one for some months now. Hell, a boy and girl in his social studies class had kissed each other in front of one of their lockers. It confused Eddie, but so did many things people did.

Now, though, Eddie knew that many of the illnesses he supposedly had were not real. It was a weird thing to know, especially since he hadn’t seen his mother since he ran out of the house to go fight It with the other losers.

It wasn’t until he saw Ben kiss Bev in the sewer that he even realized kissing was something those of them in the Losers Club could even do. Further solidifying this was when he looked back at the patch of grass where the blood oath had just happened, and saw Bev and Bill kissing after everyone had walked away. He wasn’t sure why he had looked back, but he knew it was something he wasn’t supposed to see, so he tore his eyes away as quick as he could. 

Ahead of him now was Richie on his bike, and Eddie could swear he felt a switch click in his head. The anxious feeling from catching two of his friends kissing turned into a different anxiety. This was far more sinister, far more aggressive. A thought crept up his throat, as if he were choking on it. 

_ Do I want to kiss Richie? _

Before anything else could come of the concept, Eddie got on his bike and went as fast as was possible, all the way home. Maybe if his mother screamed loud enough it could scare the thought out of his head.

—

The next time he saw Richie was, well, the next day. Both boys had become accustomed to seeing each other everyday, even with It to consider. Eddie was made aware of his best friend in the way he often was, by a distinct _ clink _of pebbles on his window. He peered down from his second story window to see Richie in his distinct patterned button down over a t-shirt, and shorts. Thankful to have his first human contact of the day outside of his mother scolding him and telling him that his pills have to be taken in front of her from now one as he’s, “... clearly more sick than I thought,” Eddie made his way down the stairs with care as to not make his mom aware of anything, and opened the back door. Without words, he greeted Richie and led him upstairs. 

“I’m sure your mom wants me dead now, huh. Or at least that’s what she wants you to think,” Richie snarked right as Eddie’s door closed. He spoke soft, though, as if to let Eddie know that he was still considering reality. 

“Shut the fuck up,” Eddie hit back, shoving Richie by the shoulder. “What’s up? Thought you’d be at the arcade or something,” he said as Richie took his shoes off.

“I was gonna come see if you wanted to come with me. I can restart my training again now that the fucking serial killer clown is dead.” The sentence makes both boys consciously pause for a moment, reliving the events of just 24 hours ago. Eddie’s anxiety breaks him out of it, though.

“Yeah sure, I can come if you have my funeral arrangements planned for after my mom fucking murders me for sneaking out again. I’m pretty sure if I ever leave this house again she’ll have an aneurysm.”

“Oh shit, yeah, huh. Didn’t you tell her you knew the pills were bullshit though?”

“That only made it worse. Now she’s convinced that I’m even sicker than she thought. She reorganized all the pills after I threw them on the ground and shit. She makes me take them in front of her.”

Richie’s eyes widened in surprise for a minute, but then he grinned in his signature fashion.

“I mean, as you may know, I sneak in here all the time to fuck your mom, so I’ve gotten pretty good at it.”

Eddie pushed him again, making Richie fall back onto Eddie’s bed laughing, albeit softly. 

“You’re used to sneaking in here to see me, asshole.”

“Believe what you will, Eddie Spaghetti,” Richie said through giggles.

“Don’t call me that!” he raised his voice a little this time, sitting next to Richie on the bed now and punching him in the arm. As was usual, Richie feigned an overreaction before reaching over to tickle Eddie. After a few seconds of repressed squeals, he shoved his friend off of him with a huff.

“I told you I hate it when you call me that!” Eddie whined, with a little intention. He’d gotten over the nicknames a while ago, but this was their “thing,” now.

“You love it,” Richie said with a smirk. But his eyes were a bit more genuine than normal. It was something Eddie hadn’t seen before. But, he couldn’t pinpoint it before Richie shot up from the bed and spun in a little circle.

“Okay, fine. Seems we’ll just have to make your pristine bedroom a bit more entertaining. Don’t you have some board games and shit?” Richie asked.

Eddie could barely process what Richie was doing before his best friend was pulling Clue out from the bookshelf, ripping the box open and dumping out all the pieces in a disorganized mess. Richie chose spending time with Eddie in his boring bedroom over Street Fighter, and the arcade, which was Richie’s favorite place in all of Derry. It took Eddie by surprise, but he didn’t have time to deal with that right now.

“What the fuck are you doing? We can’t even play this with two people!” he said, despite moving over to organize all the pieces in little piles. 

The boys played Richie’s weird version of Clue with two people where he could usually win, and every once in a while Eddie would win a round, only to make Richie smile like it was the plan all along. When they got bored of that, they played an incorrect version of Monopoly, and spent the afternoon together, rotating through board games. Eddie thought he caught Richie staring at him a couple times, but it was never anything more than a maybe.

—

The school year started, and the Losers Club (minus Mike, who is homeschooled and Bev, who is living in Portland now) all began their 9th grade year with even less excitement than normal, if that were somehow possible. At least with the five of them, all often unwilling to separate from the pack, they could fight off Greta and anyone else who picked on them. Henry Bowers was taken into custody right after killing his dad, so the losers don’t have to worry about him. But, the teasing persisted elsewhere because of course it does. The emotional beat down from dealing with Pennywise had both shortened their tolerance for harassment and their willingness to care about schoolwork. Except, maybe, for Stanley.

While the separation of the lucky seven had taken down morale a bit, Eddie and Richie enjoyed the excuse to get to see each other more often that school introduced. They had a couple overlapping classes, and each one they would spend giggling in the back like always.

When someone who isn’t Henry Bowers yelled at Richie across the hallway for the first time that year, though, his expression changed. 

School had just gotten out, and it took all of the losers by surprise. It was over nothing, really. Richie said some joke about Stan having a tiny dick, and all the boys heard was,

“How would you know, faggot?”

Eddie hadn’t heard the word in a while, which was kind of surprising given that it was most bully’s favorite word to shoot his way. He was even more surprised that someone hurled it at Richie before him. All of them had heard it shouted (it was never said; always shouted or snarled) at them at one point or another, of course, but Eddie was its most frequent target. His small stature, high voice, and pretense to cleanliness didn’t help this.

Richie’s face darkened before he said something that took the other four boys by complete surprise.

“SO WHAT IF I AM A FAGGOT?!”

It rang through the hallway and echoed off the lockers. Eddie’s jaw dropped, agape and horrified at what would come next.

“You wanna tell me something, Tozier?” The assailant was a boy in their Phys. Ed class. Josh Collins, who was for sure on the basketball team, and for sure capable of beating the shit out of any given member of the Losers Club. 

Before Richie could answer, Bill stepped in.

“Nothing you deserve to know, Collins. B-ba-back off.”

Josh looked over to his right to see their science teacher standing in his doorway glaring at him, so he couldn’t follow through with the punch he was obviously planning.

“Whatever. Fucking freaks, all of you,” he spat out before leaning into Richie. “I’ll get back at you later, fairy.”

After Collins turned away to leave, Richie shivered and ran out of the building. The other boys followed in toe, not letting him get too far ahead. He didn’t run very far past the doors, though. He just sat down next to the trees that lined the walkway out of the main building, breathing heavy.

Eddie sat down first, followed by Ben, Bill, and Stan in that order. They all stayed quiet for a moment, not sure how to react to what had just happened. In the usual case, any of them would just brush it off like always, but Richie looked shaken. This didn’t seem to be the usual case. Eddie’s mind raced at the possible reasons why his best friend would be so upset about something so… typical for them. Maybe he hadn’t heard it in a while since Bowers got arrested.

Bill and Ben mumbled reassurances to Richie to calm him down, but Eddie stayed quiet. That same anxiety that filled his chest that day after they defeated It bubbled back up his throat, choking him up the same as before. He just sat close to Richie, hoping his sympathetic thoughts transferred over.

It seemed like they did, because instead of humoring his friends with a response, Richie just shot up out of nowhere.

“Why are you all making over me like some fucking charity case? Let’s go to the quarry like we planned. Mike’s probably waiting for us.”

The four boys still sitting all looked up at him, confused. Bill the most confused, because he saw Richie’s face when Collins got close to them. 

“Are you sure? You seem upset,” Bill asked.

“I’m fine! You think I haven’t been called that by every jock in this school? Come on, let’s go get our bikes,” Richie insisted, pulling Eddie up by his arm. “What’s gotten into you, Eds?”

Eddie shook his head back to reality as he stood up.

“Oh, er, nothing. I’m fine. Don’t fucking call me that. Let’s go,” Eddie pushed out, although it felt a little robotic leaving his mouth.

None of the boys seemed to notice it, though, and upon confirmation that all was well, five sevenths of the Losers Club made the trek to the quarry to meet Mike.

—

Since that day, the word rang through Eddie’s thoughts. So did Richie’s response. 

_ So what if I am a… _

There was something about it that scared him, but also made him feel the tiniest tinge of hope. If Richie could say something like that to a bully, what might he be thinking for real? Eddie tried to erase the thought as much as possible, but seeing Richie everyday at school only made it harder. 

Eddie and Richie were hanging out at the park after school alone one day. The others all had other stuff to do, but Eddie didn’t want to go home and Richie seemed to want to hang out with Eddie. They’d been friends for years now, but for some reason it always surprised Eddie whenever Richie showed a genuine interest in seeing him. The jokes and jabs at him never held any weight, but sometimes he wondered. That wonder was often contradicted by the fact that Richie would go out of his way to hang out with Eddie, both in and out of school. 

But that wasn’t the only contradictory thing Eddie felt. 

Richie was going on about some weird movie his parents showed him the other night, which Eddie was only sort of listening to and then, well, it just sort of spilled out.

“What did you mean, a while back, when you said what you did, to that Collins kid in the hallway?”

Richie just stared at him. It infuriated Eddie for some reason. His heart pounded in his chest.

“What the fuck are you talking about, Eds?”

“Don’t call me that! Just… normally when bullies give us shit you say something like, ‘Fuck off!’ or ‘That’s not what your mom said to me last night!’ But this time you didn’t. You said…” Eddie trailed off, not even directing his words to Richie anymore. Maybe he was just asking the universe, or God, or something, and Richie happened to be there. Maybe thinking that made this conversation less awful. 

“Er, I. Erm. I don’t know. I don’t always think when I talk. You know that,” Richie babbled, but the lie was veiled thin. 

“No, obviously, you talk out of your ass most of the day, but that didn’t sound like something you just pulled out of nowhere, you know?”

Richie looked scared. Eddie had never garnered that expression from Richie before. He hated it. Richie coughed out his nerves before saying anything else.

“I… I guess I meant exactly what I said? I dunno, so what if I am? Why the fuck would it matter to Josh fucking Collins?”

Eddie’s mind was racing. People didn’t talk like that in Derry. Being gay wasn’t a “so what” kind of thing. He didn’t know what to say. That was worse than whatever the fuck his brain was coming up with. Nothing he was thinking could work its way out.

“Oh. I-I guess you’re… not wrong. But like, are you…?”

“A fag? No! I mean, I don’t fucking know. Girls are nice to look at, but who fucking knows?”

Eddie’s heart pounded in his chest. The thoughts sitting in the back of his mind for the last month punched him in the center of his chest. He couldn’t see right. Richie didn’t even say anything substantial, and _ this _was how he was reacting? He had to get up. He had to leave. He couldn’t let Richie see him freak out like this.

“I. I have to go home,” he mumbled, trying to pick up his backpack and his bike.

“Woah, hey, Eds, I didn’t mean—”

“No, I just have to go home. My mom—” is all he can get out before he hops on his bike and rides away. He can hear Richie yelling after him, but it stopped after a minute, and before he even registered where he was going, he got home. He gave his mom a hollow kiss hello, ran upstairs, and laid down. His body was doing the same thing it did when he thought he was having an asthma attack, but if he didn’t have asthma, then what was it? His chest was so tight, and his vision hazed over, so he just shut his eyes. Richie’s words kept circling around in his head.

_ Girls are nice to look at, but who fucking knows? _

_ So what if I am? _

Had Richie read his mind? Was he taunting him? Was this all some big elaborate joke to make Eddie look like an idiot? He felt so _ stupid _ and so _ childish _for running away and for asking in the first fucking place and he was certain the world was about to cave in. The tears on his face are hot, burning through his cheeks and making his eyes boil. The only thing he can feel is fear, the need to run and make himself as small as possible. 

He almost considered reaching for his inhaler anyway, since he figured it worked to stop this feeling before, but then his thought is interrupted by a well-known _ clink _ on his bedroom window. This only made his breathing more labored, but something in him forced him to get up. It’s Richie, of course. He doesn’t know why he even bothered looking out the window. But, when he did, he saw Richie’s face. Red, puffy, _ off _.

He ran downstairs, to the back door. But this time he didn’t let Richie inside, he just walked out. He sat on the steps of the back porch, and without even looking at each other, Richie sat next to him. Eddie just sat. Still, yet shaking.

“Look, Eds, I’m sorry I freaked you out, I didn’t—”

“I thought about kissing you, Richie.”

Eddie felt like the air got ten times heavier. Richie doesn’t say anything for a second. The only sound from either of them is just Eddie’s quick, empty breaths.

“You too?” is all Richie said.

Eddie stopped shaking. He looked over to Richie, half expecting Pennywise to be there, laughing at him. Ready to eat him whole. Maybe he wanted that over dealing with the joke Richie’s response had to be. 

But it wasn’t that. All Eddie saw was his best friend looking more vulnerable than he ever thought he’d see. Up close now, he could see how red his eyes were. He’d never seen Richie cry before, and he supposed he didn’t really see him cry here either, but this was way closer than he’d ever been before. 

“Er. Yeah,” Eddie felt stupid saying something so casual right now but he didn’t know what else to say. A nervous laugh muttered its way through the word, like it could be passed off as a joke if it needed to be, but it had too much truth to it.

Richie swallowed. His Adam’s apple, although small, was starting to show more now that they were getting older. For some reason, it made Eddie’s heart leap. 

“You don’t get to bullshit me here, Richie,” Eddie said.

“I’m… I’m not. At least I don’t think I am,” Richie replied, with a tinge of a smile at the corner of his lips. Eddie’s heart leapt at that too.

The two boys just stare at each other in awe for a second. 

“Wanna come upstairs? My mom could walk out here any second. Also like. Neighbors.”

“Oh. Erm, yeah. Sure,” Richie stumbled, sitting up faster than his body could accommodate for.

Eddie led his friend upstairs, silent as always. The moment he shut the door behind them, he looked back at Richie. Both of them were breathing fast, but Eddie wasn’t the same kind of nervous as before.

“You don’t get to tell the boys about this yet, okay? Fuck, what even is this?” Eddie said, pushing down the fear of other people knowing anything about what he said on the porch. 

“Can I kiss you before we decide, Eds?” Richie asked, walking closer to Eddie.

“Don’t call me—” Eddie tried, but he was silenced by how, gentle? Richie looked. “Oh. Yeah.”

And it was… Not gross. It was better than not gross, actually. It wasn’t the weird exchange of saliva that Eddie always thought. It was… nice. He didn’t want to stop. Then Richie pulled back a bit.

“Is that? Are you okay with that?” The Richie Tozier that Eddie was used to, the brash, loudmouth with no concept of boundaries, was softer. His hand was on Eddie’s cheek, and even though his face was shadowed from blocking Eddie’s view of the light, his eyes lacked that typical carelessness they often held. 

“Er, yeah. Do you wanna sit down?”

Richie nodded, and they sat down on Eddie’s bed, looking at each other. This time, Eddie pulled Richie down to meet him. And it was simple. He wasn’t ready for all the weird tongue stuff he saw grown ups do, but whatever it was that they were doing right now? He liked it. He didn’t feel dirty, kissing Richie. 

The next time they broke apart, it was so Eddie could catch his breath. He looked up at his? friend? and Richie was smiling. He smiled back. 

“Can I… hug you?” Eddie felt weird asking, but he felt like any physical contact right now was at risk of meaning something. Sure, they’ve hugged before, but this is different. This is more.

“Yeah, oh my God, Eds, of course you can fucking hug me,” Richie replied, laughing a bit to loosen the tension. The words had a bite that Eddie knew well but an affection behind them he was getting used to. So Eddie hugged him. And they just stayed there, hugging for a while. It felt right. Eddie pulled away a little to look at Richie, and then he kissed him again. And again. 

And, the more they kissed, the less he gave a single shit about his mother’s warnings.

—

After a while, Eddie and Richie would only go in the hammock together when they were hanging out at the clubhouse, or Eddie would hold Richie’s hand under the water at the quarry, and they would pretend like the other boys didn’t notice. But they did. And they shared knowing looks between each other. That is, until one day Mike—ever the frank one—just asked them.

“Are you guys like… boyfriends or something?” It wasn’t accusatory, but genuine. Mike had that way about him.

Eddie and Richie went red the second Mike started the word “boyfriends.” They just kind of stared at him. 

“Er, erm. Maybe?” Richie said, posing it almost as a question to Eddie while also being a confirmation for Mike and the rest of them.

“Maybe?” Bill said, smiling.

“Yeah. I think so,” Eddie butted in. “Boyfriends is about right, huh?”

“I told you!” Stan said to Bill, smiling the same as the other boy. Mike and Ben both followed suit, all of them arguing who guessed first.

“Fuckers!” Richie replied, throwing the book he was reading at them, harmless and giggling as it happened.

Eddie looked over at him, and Richie was beaming. He did that a lot more often lately.

**Author's Note:**

> Leave a comment if you liked it!! My tumblr is http://beholdingransom.tumblr.com


End file.
